Grass-Fed Products are Clean and
Safe

Products from grass-fed animals are safer than food from
conventionally-raised animals. This is especially reassuring now that mad cow
disease, or BSE, has been confirmed in this country. Countries that conduct
more rigorous testing for BSE have identified hundreds more
cases. Many experts agree that if we were to test every one of our cows for
BSE (the protocol in Japan), we, too, would find more diseased animals.

As you will discover by reading the postings below, 100
percent grass-fed animals have an extremely low risk of BSE That is because
their diets contain no animal by-products or other unnatural ingredients. They
eat what nature intended: grasses and other green plants. You will also see
research showing that choosing products from grass-fed animals may lower your
risk of two other food borne illnesses, campylobacter and E. coli.

A final note of reassurance is that the producers listed
on the eatwild.com website certify that their animal and dairy products are
free of feed antibiotics, added hormones, and other growth promoters, making
them the "cleanest" animal food you can buy.

Nearly half of US meat and poultry likely contaminated
with Staph

Almost half the meat and poultry sold in the US is likely
to be contaminated by highly dangerous bacteria, according to research published
this month (April 2011) in the scientific journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The study estimates that 47 percent of the meat and poultry
on US supermarket shelves contains the bacteria staphylococcus aureus ("Staph").
It is not, however, among the four bacteria—Salmonella, Campylobacter,
E. coli, and Enterococcus—routinely tested in meat by the
US government.

The researchers tested 136 samples from 80 brands of beef,
pork, chicken and turkey, purchased from 26 grocery stores in five major US
cities. DNA tests from staph-infected samples suggest that the farm animals
themselves were the major source of contamination. "Densely-stocked industrial
farms, where food animals are steadily fed low doses of antibiotics... [are]
ideal breeding grounds for drug-resistant bacteria that move from animals to
humans," according to the report.

The bacteria is not only linked to a number of human diseases,
but is also resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics. Lance B. Price,
Ph. D., senior author of the study, stated that “The fact that drug-resistant
S. aureus was so prevalent, and likely came from the food animals themselves,
is troubling, and demands attention to how antibiotics are used in food-animal
production today.”

"Antibiotics are the most important drugs that we
have to treat Staph infections; but when Staph are resistant to three, four,
five or even nine different antibiotics -- like we saw in this study -- that
leaves physicians few options," Price said. Click
here to read more.

Grass-fed cows are not mad cows

In December, 2003, tissues from a cow from
a Washington State confinement dairy tested positive for BSE or mad cow
disease. The
cow contracted BSE by being fed meat and bone meal made from other cattle
that were infected with BSE. This was common practice in the U.S. until
1997. In essence, grass-grazing herbivores were being turned into
cannibals. Tragically, people who ate these meat-eating cows ran the risk
of acquiring a human form of mad cow disease called Creutzfelt-Jakob disease
that killed more than a hundred people in Europe. To date, two other US
cattle have been diagnosed with BSE.

Since the 1997 USDA
ban on meat and bone meal in cattle feed, the risk of mad cow disease
has gone down substantially. But there is always the risk that feed
producers will inadvertently mix meat and bone meal designated for
other animals into approved cattle feed.

When you choose products from cattle and dairy
cows that have been raised on pasture all of their lives, there is no possibility
that they consumed
feed that contained any animal tissue, virtually eliminating the
possibility of mad cow disease.

Eating grass-fed beef may lower your risk of E. coli infection

When you eat grass-fed meat, you may have a lower risk
of becoming infected with dangerous E. coli bacteria.

Why is this? Work conducted at Cornell University by Russell
and Diez-Gonzalez in the late 1990s showed that cattle that were fed hay had
far fewer E. coli than when they were fed a standard feedlot diet based
on grain. (Microbes Infect 2, No. 1 (2000): 45-53.)

In addition, the two researchers conducted a test tube
study showing that E. coli from grass-fed cattle is more likely to be
killed by the natural acidity of our digestive tract and therefore might be
less likely to survive and make us ill.

The reason for the greater persistence of E. coli from
grain-fed cattle, the researchers speculated, is that feeding grain to cattle
makes their digestive tracts abnormally acidic. Over time, the E. coli in
their systems become acclimated to this acid environment. When we ingest them,
a high percentage will survive the acid shock of our digestive juices. By contrast,
few E. coli from grass-fed cattle will survive because they have not become
acid-resistant.

Because of this lack of scientific certainty,
people eating grass-fed beef should practice all the safe handling techniques
recommended for grain-fed beef. A type of E. coli referred to as
0157:H7 can be deadly, and it takes very few bacteria to cause disease.

Whether or not grass-feeding
reduces the number and acidity of E. coli in the digestive tract
of cattle, there is another undisputed reason that eating grass-fed beef
may be safer. Cattle raised on pasture are cleaner at the time
of slaughter.

E. coli contamination takes place in the slaughterhouse
when manure from an animal comes in contact with meat. The less manure on an
animal when it enters the slaughter house, the less likely the meat will become
contaminated.

It is difficult to remove all the fecal contamination
from feedlot cattle because they stand all day long in dirt and manure. In
a recent article in the magazine Meat Marketing and Technology, the
associate editor stated that pasture-raised animals were much easier to clean "because
they come from small herds raised in relatively clean pastures." Most
U.S. cattle, he said, "are raised in far larger numbers in congested and
typically less sanitary feed lots." ("The Future of Food Safety," by
Joshua Lipsky. Meat Marketing and Technology, April 2001.)

Australians have discovered that raising cattle on pasture
reduced their risk of carrying a bacteria called
"campylobacter." Fifty-eight percent of the cattle raised in a feedlot
carried the bacteria, but only two percent of those raised and finished on
pasture.

Campylobacter bacteria can cause fever, nausea, vomiting,
abdominal pain, headache, and muscle pain. Most cases are mild, but it can
be life-threatening if other diseases such as cancer or liver disease are present.
People most likely to be affected are children under the age of 5 and young
adults from 15–29. Symptoms can occur from two to ten days after eating
infected meat.

USDA gives consumers a false sense of security about U.S.
beef

Ann Veneman, Agriculture Secretary in the Bush administration,
made the following statement in a 2004 news conference: "scientific evidence
shows that only nervous tissue like brain and spinal cord can carry the infectious
agent" for mad cow disease.

Not so, according to Dr. Stanley Prusiner, the neurologist
who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1997 for first describing prions, the
misshapen proteins believed to cause the devastating disease. "We don't
know where and how prions move through the [cow's] body before they show up
in its brain," he told a New York Times reporter.

This means that the disease may be transmitted by eating
other parts of a cow besides the nervous tissue—including the meat. Dr.
Prusiner has devised a test to find out exactly where prions are located, but
according to the New York Times article, "That experiment has
not been done..." The USDA's new safeguards requiring that "specified
risk material" be removed from the food supply do not appear to be broad
enough.

The New York Times, Sunday, January 4th,
"Jumble of Tests May Slow Mad Cow Solution," Sandra Blakeslee,"
p. 10.

Feedlot cowboy expresses alarm at the amount
of drugs given to U.S. cattle

We recently received
a letter from a ranch hand at a medium-sized U.S. feedlot. Like most modern
day cowboys, his job is more likely to involve injecting cattle with steroids
than herding them on horseback. His comments give a rare, behind-the-scenes
look at some of the current practices in animal feeding operations.

"What really
alarmed me is when I put $5,000 worth of shots in 500 head of heifers. I
gave shots of Dectomax, which is a pesticide and is very thick and oily.
I get the impression that it's a pesticide strip inside the cow. I'm told
that it leaves the animal over the course of 6 months or so, but I'd think
some of it stays in the fat. And then some kind of 7-way vaccination. Then
I put in some kind of hormone implant that is so strong it was recommended
to wear gloves. Other times, I have given Lutalyse, which synchronizes the
heifers so they all cycle at one time. I truly think those of us in the cattle
market can do without all this stuff, except maybe a 4-Way vaccine to prevent
black leg and a couple of other things that can wipe out your herd."

The "bad" E. coli persists
in the barn but not on pasture

The type of E. coli bacteria
responsible for most cases of human illness and death is called
"E. coli 0157:H7. Recently, calves that had
tested positively for this deadly strain were divided into two groups. One
was raised in a barn, and the other on pasture. Samples were taken once a month
from April to September. The calves raised on pasture showed no signs of 0157:H7
for the entire period. Meanwhile, every one of the calves raised in pens had
at least one positive sample. According to the Swedish researchers who conducted
the study, "This suggests that calves on pasture may be less exposed to
the bacteria or that they clear themselves."

Too little, too late

(Posted in 2002) In response to growing public concern
over Mad Cow Disease, the American Meat Institute is proposing a new certification
program. Under this voluntary program, cattle marketers would certify that "to
the best of my knowledge" their animals were not fed protein derived from
mammalian tissues. J. Patrick Boyle, president of the AMI said that "We
want to reassure ... consumers that the cattle we process into beef products
meet all federal requirements, including their diets and medications." Meanwhile,
because bags of feed can and do get mixed up, the animal feed industry is working
on its own certification program to ensure that cattle and sheep by-products
are kept separate from other feedstuff.

Whether these belated, voluntary efforts manage to protect
the public and calm their fears remains to be seen. Can an industry that saves
costs by fattening ruminants on pizza crust, chicken feathers, gummy bears,
chicken manure, candy bars, bubble gum, cement dust, and ground-up telephone
books be relied upon to produce a safe and healthy product?

In 1998, researchers Diez-Gonzalez and colleagues from
Cornell University drew worldwide attention when they reported that switching
cattle from grain to grass lowered the production of acid-resistant E. coli bacteria.
Acid-resistant E. coli are believed to be much
more difficult for humans to combat. The fact that keeping animals on pasture
might protect consumers from E. coli was very good
news, indeed.

Since publication of the Cornell study, however, these
results have been contested by a number of groups, including researchers at
the University of Idaho. Now a study by the USDA Meat and Animal Research Center
in Lincoln, Nebraska supports the Cornell findings. The Nebraska researchers
began their investigation by trying to find alternative feeding strategies
to combat acid-resistant E. coli, contending that
hay feeding "is not a practical approach for cattle feeders." Unfortunately,
none of their experimental approaches worked. When they switched the animals
to hay, however, they found that the more natural diet did indeed have the
desired effect. The researchers concluded:
"This study confirms Diez-Gonzalez (1998) report that feeding hay for
a short duration can reduce acid-resistant E. coli populations." Score
one for Mother Nature.

Pastured pigs and poultry are
safer, too.

Animals on drugs

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report that about
70 percent of all antibiotics made in the United States now go to fattening
up livestock. In the mid-1980s, 16 million pounds of antibiotics were used
in livestock production. Twenty-five million pounds are being used today. This
ever increasing use is contributing to the creation of antibiotic-resistant
bacteria. According to the UCS, more than 95 percent of a common bacteria called
Staphylococcus aureus is now resistant to penicillin, requiring the use of
newer and stronger drugs.

One of the main uses for antibiotics in the cattle industry
is to combat so-called "feedlot diseases,"
diseases that are common when cattle are shipped to distant feedlots, mingled
with animals from other herds, and switched from their natural diet of forage
to a grain-based feedlot diet. Animals that remain on pasture from birth until
market are so healthy that they rarely require antibiotic treatment.

It was only a matter of time

According
to a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, pigs raised
in factory farms in Taiwan are harboring a dangerous type of salmonella that
has become resistant to one of our newest and most potent antibiotics—fluoroquinolone,
a drug that is critical to human medicine. When people become infected with
this resistant strain, doctors will have few drugs in their arsenal to combat
it.

The reason that the salmonella became resistant to fluoroquinolone
is that the pigs were dosed with the drug on a regular basis. The bacteria
that were vulnerable to fluoroquinolone died off, allowing the few that were
naturally resistant to flourish.

According to a study in Preventive Veterinary Medicine,
Pigs raised on pasture are healthier than ones kept in confinement and rarely
require drugs of any kind.

Cipro's sister drug, Baytril, is being wasted on chickens

Infected poultry are now being treated with Baytril, a
drug very similar to the anthrax-fighting antibiotic Cipro. The FDA, health
advocates, and an editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine have all
urged Bayer, the producer, to withdraw the drug from the poultry industry.
Bayer, veterinarians, and commercial poultry producers are in strong opposition.
If Baytril is withdrawn, they argue, the United States will have to alter its
poultry-raising practices.

That is exactly what needs to happen. It makes no sense
to raise chickens or any other animals under conditions in which infection
is routine, requiring the routine use of antibiotics.

Bayer officials say they need more proof of damage to humans
before they will stop supplying Baytril to chicken producers.

US confinement-raised poultry not good enough for the
Russians

Early in March, 2002, Russia imposed a ban on the importation
of all poultry from the United States. Vladimir Fisinin, vice president of
the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, explained his government's position
in the March 20th issue of The Moscow Times: "I
would like to note that American farmers are injecting chickens with antibiotics
used to treat people. This is prohibited in Russia." According to Fisinin,
US poultry producers use such large doses of these drugs that they accumulate
in the tissues of the birds. "It is dangerous," he said, "especially
for children and older people."

Fisinin also asserted that giving antibiotics to chickens
fosters the growth of drug-resistant bacteria. US medical experts agree. In
a study in The New England Journal of Medicine,
researchers randomly selected 407 chickens from 26 stores in Georgia, Maryland,
Minnesota, and Oregon. More than half of the chickens were tainted with antibiotic-resistant
bacteria.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria not found in free-range
chickens

One of the problems with raising large numbers of animals
in confinement is that disease is more common, resulting in a greater reliance
on antibiotics. Over time, the bacteria mutate and become resistant to the
drugs. When we humans become infected with these antibiotic-resistant bacteria,
there are fewer effective medications available to treat us.

A survey of E. coli bacteria
isolated from poultry raised in a state-of-the-art confinement poultry operation
at a university found that all the bacteria were resistant to the commonly
used antibiotics, Tetracycline, Streptomycin and Sulphonamide (Sulphafurazole).
By contrast, all the strains of bacteria isolated from free-range birds were
sensitive to the drugs.

Human health and quality of life are compromised by large-scale
swine operations

According to a 2000 study, people living close to a 6,000
head swine operation in North Carolina reported "increased occurrences
of headaches, runny nose, sore throat, excessive coughing, diarrhea, and burning
eyes." These complaints are similar to those reported by people who work
in confinement swine operations.

Factory farming may increase profitability for corporate
owners, but it can erode the health and quality of life of farm workers and
members of the surrounding community.